Apple has dropped the price for the 10th-gen iPad Pro by $100, bringing the starting price for this 10.9 inch tablet with an Apple A14 Bionic processor down to $349. First launched in the fall of 2022, the tablet was the first model in Apple’s entry-level iPad family to ship without a Home button and to use a USB Type-C port rather than a Lightning port.
And now that Apple has lowered the starting price for this model, the company is also killing off the 9th-gen iPad, which means two things: the starting price for a budget iPad has effectively gone up by $20, and you can no longer buy a new iPad from Apple that has a Home button, Lightning port, and headphone jack.
For the most part, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Well, the price hike is a little bad, but it’s also not surprising given inflation. And some folks are definitely going to miss the headphone jack.
But the world has largely made the move to USB-C as the de-facto standard for smartphones and tablets, which means that power adapters and other accessories that work with your phone will probably work with this tablet.
And dropping the Home button may have been a somewhat controversial move when Apple first made it, but the company has largely abandoned the physical button for its mobile devices, so it was kind of a vestigial feature at this point.
Removing the home button also allowed Apple to shrink the bezels and squeeze a slightly larger display into a tablet that’s just a bit wider than the 9th-gen model, while actually weighing a tiny bit less (1.05 pounds versus 1.07 pounds).
Just about the only down side is that if you still had some Lightning cables, docks, or other accessories lying around and were thinking of picking up a budget Apple tablet in the near future, you may need to invest in some updated accessories (if you don’t already have USB-C gear for your phone or other gadgets).
The price difference for more storage is still absolutely absurd… another $150 just to increase the storage from 64gb to 256gb. There’s no way they sourced EMMC storage with that much of a price difference at any point in the last five years. It’s straight-up price gouging.
It’s 2024. No mobile device should be sold without a minimum of 256gb of storage. Even on the most basic entry-level models of phones, tablets, and streaming appliances should have at least that much (or a MicroSD slot).
I completely agree coming from the pc and android world, memory seems to be so much cheaper and easier to increase or upgrade than on Apple products. As far as ipads are concerned I am sold on the product and it being superior to most Android tablets. But no ear phone plug and $150 to upgrade to 256 gb of ram is crazy. I know blue tooth rear buds are a thing but still prefer weird buds. I have several blue tooth ear buds but most of the sets are missing one of the ears.
Then vote with your wallet and don’t buy them.
Apple’s seen its market share nosedive in the past
to where its Macs were only 5% of the market vs.
Windows. Time for Cupertino to eat humble pie again.
The real loss here is the headphones jack. When I upgraded the family iPad from a 3rd gen (2012) model a few months back, I went with a 9th gen because it was the only one left with a headphones jack.
On the phones it at least helps with waterproofing (and I suppose it makes it a tiny bit smaller). But iPads have neither of those excuses.
Also, “Apple has dropped the price for the 10th-gen iPad Pro by $100, bringing the starting price for this 10.9 inch tablet with an Apple A14 Bionic processor down to $349.” – that’s not the iPad Pro, it’s just the regular one.